


always on guard

by undernightlight



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Flash Fic, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, but it is basically just angst so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 18:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undernightlight/pseuds/undernightlight
Summary: “Let me guess, running away from something. Ex-girlfriend - no, domineering father.”He couldn't get it out of his head.
Kudos: 8





	always on guard

**Author's Note:**

> a short little sullivan study because i love him and he is gay

_“Let me guess, running away from something. Ex-girlfriend - no, domineering father.”_

Sullivan hated how completely accurate that last statement was. Somehow, he hated it even more than the man’s statement before it was utterly wrong. He’d never had a girlfriend to run away from, at least not since he was thirteen, but he supposed that didn’t really count. Not to say he hadn’t had...lovers, but that wasn’t something he spoke about. He tried not to think about it either, but it was rather difficult.

He hadn’t had sex since coming to Kembleford. He’d never had a particularly active sex life, it being illegal and all, but he may have, when it came to this particular offence, broken it more than once. But that was London. Kembleford was drastically different, and he would rather not risk it. In the city, news spread quite fast, but there were so many people that it felt like word took forever to get around. In the rural village of Kembleford, word spread fast and you knew it, and so Sullivan would rather people not know his...preference.

He struggled to even think it, let alone say the word, but he’d heard it enough from his father. It wasn’t a nice word, not a word he ever wanted to be associated with, but he had yet to find a word for him that wasn’t steeped in hate and aggression.

Running away from his father was not the only reason he left London, but it was the emotional one. They had never been close, not like he was with his mother, but there had always been a form of respect. His father had been a police officer, and his grandfather. Following those footsteps didn’t feel forced it felt right, but there was an atmosphere around police that wasn’t exactly welcoming to people like him. Again, it wasn’t something he thought about, not actively, but he found it was always somewhere within him, unable to escape the feeling of suffocation.

He always had to have his guard up, but being only human, it had slipped on occasion. Whether anyone had noticed or not he didn’t know, and if they did, they had the common decency to not comment on it, at least not to his face. Once, it had happened with Lady Felicia. She invited him and a guess to a party, and she asked, while invading his personal space, if he had anyone to go with. His words with the meaning he wanted to convey would have come across as, “No, Lady Felicia,” but what he actually said was “No lady, Felicia.” She seemingly didn’t notice, thank god, but he’d noticed it of course. There had also been a time or two where he’d found himself distracted, words filtering through without meaning, because he’d been staring. It was never an active decision to ignore someone, but sometimes, on occasion, he found the man in front of him so attractive everything else ceased to be. It was rather embarrassing, he found, and he didn’t make a habit of it, but it still happened.

That’s why the man’s statement had hit him and refused to leave his mind. It would be much simpler if he was running from an ex-girlfriend because all of this internal strife wouldn’t be there. His father would be domineering regardless, but his statements made about men interested in other men would’ve been enough to drive him not just from the home, but from the entire city.


End file.
